Many of us have individual interests, academic or otherwise. Some of us can quote lines from “Star Wars” from memory, describe the exact history of a sports team in great detail or recite 100 digits of pi. These small quirks developed as a result of pure, unfiltered passion and curiosity about a topic that brought someone joy, and while these interests may overlap, rarely are they exactly the same for two people.

However, these passions only seem so pure when they remain in one’s mind. Reveal them in front of the wrong crowd and you are given your very own title: a nerd.

This title does not seem very good. The word “nerd” conjures up images of thick glasses, misaligned teeth and bad skin. Nerds are not supposed to be conventionally attractive, socially capable or athletic. This stereotype gets further reinforced in the media. Picture the one character seemingly added in to be funny, the glasses-wearing outcast who constantly “nerds out” and acts differently. The only way the character can be accepted is if they lose the glasses and begin to act like everyone else. People are taught a lesson: Don’t show your passions to the world, as that makes you uncool. 

But is being a nerd really so bad? Why hide something that makes one so much more complex?

To be a nerd means to have something that you care about deeply, so much so that you are willing to take the time to understand it so carefully. You immerse yourself so deeply in this hyperfixation that you become an expert in the field, a feat that does not come easily. Glasses or not, it is this motivation of curiosity to go beyond what we normally see every day that makes being a nerd so admirable. After all, it’s these experts who dare go beyond what has already been discovered and innovate.

Think of everything we have already built. From the phones that connect us to the world, to the buildings we live in, to the books we learn and study so deeply, these ideas and innovations were put forward and built by nerds. These nerds were not ashamed to be different and built something differently, thus the world was rewarded from these efforts. 

Being a nerd allows us to connect with other nerds too. Imagine a group of people that are all visibly passionate about a topic, sharing ideas with each other. Without diving into our passions, we miss the opportunity to meet so many new people, people with whom we share motivations with and who understand us beneath the surface. In fact, it’s when we are able to connect and share our passions with others that we are able to increase our own appreciation for the subject as well.

When we suppress these passions we hold ourselves back. We present a shell of ourselves to the outside world for the sake of pleasing others or fitting into a group that is doing the same thing. If we were to share our interests more openly instead, we could build more meaningful connections rather than superficial ones.

This isn’t a hard skill to learn, nor is it something that needs to be learned in the first place. Everyone has something that pushes them to keep going, some sort of passion that makes us tick. Whether it is an academic field that continues to inspire us or a hobby that gives us some reprieve from everyday life, we have this passion that we could fully engross ourselves in given the choice. No passion merely for our own growth can be destructive, and we can find our inner nerd in so many places. Why not dive in?